Journeyman Read online

Page 17


  —Why not?

  —As it was, he didn’t believe me.

  —I wouldn’t want to either.

  —You think I should have come out and said it, though?

  —If you’re wrong, it makes you look bad, but if you’re right, and you don’t come out and say it directly, in the long run it makes him look bad because his nephew is an arsonist.

  —Shit.

  —Right.

  —I just wish I had some evidence.

  —That’s when you go directly to the authorities.

  Nolan massages his forehead and sighs. Linda says:

  —You were right to at least mention your concerns to Joe. He was probably dismissive because he’s embarrassed. Wouldn’t you be?

  —I guess. Yeah.

  A second of silence passes between the former lovers. Hoping not to lose her, Nolan speaks abruptly and without thinking:

  —You know, you ever want to fly up here one of these weekends for a visit, I’ll buy the ticket.

  —Where’d that come from?

  —I was just thinking we could drive out to the ocean, spend a few days there. Maybe run down to the city for a night. There’s a small airport, not far from here. They got direct flights to and from Vegas. I might be able to get a day off if you want to extend your weekend, even.

  —Nolan.

  —Just think about it.

  —Nolan, I’ve started dating again.

  —Is it serious?

  —No, but apparently we weren’t serious either, remember?

  —Are you sleeping with him?

  —That’s none of your business, but you know what, yeah, I am.

  Nolan doesn’t respond.

  —You left, Nolan. You mailed me a fucking letter that said take care, and you left. You actually wrote, “Take care.”

  —I know it.

  —I’m not coming up there to see you, Nolan. And I don’t think we should talk like this anymore. I don’t think it’s good for you.

  —Linda.

  —Don’t. OK? Just stop.

  While sinking sixteens into blocks for the transom they’re installing above the bedroom doors upstairs, Nolan smashes his thumb with the waffled face of his framing hammer. The pain is excruciating, and his thumb, bleeding around the fingernail, immediately begins to throb. Nolan climbs down from the ladder, drops his hammer in its holster, and wraps his thumb tightly in his handkerchief.

  He stands for a moment, watching his blood soak through the white cotton. Then, he hangs his bags on a nail in a stud he put there for that purpose and walks downstairs to the living room, where the site’s first aid kit is stored. He finds Joe standing in the shadows to the side of a window. He’s spying on Mason while the kid, in the back of Joe’s Ram, rummages through diamond-treaded tool boxes. Joe waves Nolan over.

  —Look at this, he says mischievously.

  —What’s he doing?

  —I told him to get me the board stretcher.

  Mason has his head buried beneath the tool-box lid.

  —Look at him, Joe says, almost squealing. He’s been out there for ten minutes.

  —He’ll probably be out there ten more.

  Joe notices Nolan’s thumb.

  —You all right?

  —Not paying attention to what I was doing.

  Then, looking at his hand, Nolan stammers:

  —Joe, I—

  But Joe interrupts him:

  —Look, look.

  He smacks Nolan on the shoulder and points to Mason, who holds up a four-foot level in one hand and a come-along in the other.

  —Oh, yeah, Joe laughs, he’s nothing but trouble.

  11

  Nolan sits on the love seat in the garage, the nails laid out on the road atlas next to him. His thumb is still throbbing. He cleaned it in the shower and the bandage is fresh and white and almost glowing against the brown glass of his beer bottle, against the tan of his hand.

  The garage door is open and a breeze comes up the driveway, bringing with it the cool of the evening’s marine layer. A mourning dove coos from the power line that dips toward the garage roof. The house is quiet despite Cosmo being home as well.

  Nolan’s mind drifts over the map until he arrives at his decision. Once the roof is off the farmhouse and the trusses are rolled and sheathed, he’ll leave; he’ll give Joe two weeks. He wanted to tell him as much this afternoon, but he didn’t. Also, he’ll need to tell Cosmo soon.

  He needs to tell his brother now.

  Nolan sets the empty bottle on the concrete floor of the garage and stands and walks into the house. Standing outside the office door, Nolan listens for a second or two to the quiet on the other side before he taps lightly on the jamb with a knuckle of his middle finger.

  —Hey, bud, he says, you got a sec?

  He taps once more and waits for a response that does not come, so he reaches down and turns the knob.

  Nolan finds Cosmo lying on a blanket on the floor, facing the wall. He is curled up in the fetal position with a pillow over his head and a thin blanket covering him. The walls in the room are covered with index cards, thumbtacked in place and partially obscuring a collection of maps of Russia and Japan. Naval charts show through from behind the cards. Mercator and Peters maps, too. Tied to the thumbtacks, to pins in the maps and charts, a plexus of string fills the space of the room, each strand connecting the writing on one index card to one or more cards on the same wall or to other walls of the room. Suspended in the middle of the room, a dense confluence of linking knots concocts an intricate web, beneath which Cosmo sleeps. On a small writing desk, next to a laptop computer, stands a portrait of Cosmo and his ex-wife.

  The room’s only window is cracked open, and when Nolan opened the door, a light cross-breeze fluttered the blinds and strings. He looks through the swaying network of links and nodes. Snatches of conversations he and Cosmo have had during his stay return to him. He no longer thinks Cosmo is connected to the arsons, but this display of his thinking is unsettling. The cards on the wall are filled with handwriting in blue and black ink, in red and green scrawl. The thumbtacks and pins appear to be color-coded references themselves, all of it a labyrinth of references.

  A bookshelf, beside the desk, houses dozens of composition notebooks. One of the notebooks is opened flat and Nolan can see the pages are filled with handwriting that runs horizontally, vertically, and/or diagonally. Writing almost overlapping writing, but not quite. He sees what must be Cosmo’s manuscript standing three reams tall on a nightstand in the corner, a fist-sized piece of obsidian on top of it to serve as a paper weight.

  In the upper reaches of the room, gossamer strands connect to the string web, connect to the web and to the skip-troweled ceiling, where they blend into the eggshell-white paint. Nolan studies Cosmo, lying on the floor, a book beside him, the page heavily underlined and highlighted, filled with marginalia. The corner of the thin blanket is draped over a heap of Russian-language tapes carefully stacked beside a kanji chart. The largest map in the room is filled with curves and lines, the words Strait of Tsushima covered with routes taken. Another map illustrates the calculus of a lopsided battle. Across the room from this, a world map shows the long, arduous route the Baltic Fleet took to get to the strait, with lengths of string running out from pins along the way to chapters and paragraphs and sentences written on the cards, to individual words even: Rare Earths, Comic Books, Da Nang, Jazz, BRIC, Quilting, The Gold Rush, Dad. Letters and words in the expanding and contracting narrative, a web of Cosmo’s own making.

  Nolan watches his brother sleep. Not far from the ends of his fingers rests a ball of string and a pair of scissors, pointed blade against blunt blade, held fast by a slotted pivot pin. The quiet of the room, punctuated by the occasional fluttering of the cards in the breeze, makes space for a steady thrumming in Nolan’s ears even after he closes the door, even after he returns to his place in the garage.

  With all the
termite damage to the trusses, Mace and Nolan tear off the composite roofing and the sheathing in two days. Then, working from ladders positioned in the upstairs bedrooms, Joe has Mason take down the cords and rafters by the end of the week. For several days the old house stands without a roof, the rooms filled with sunlight, just tall walls giving way to blue sky.

  One morning, in the cool of the fog, three wire-bound truss stacks are craned up off the bed of a delivery truck and hoisted to spots atop the farmhouse, from where they will be distributed. The rafter tails rest on opposing top plates, their peaks braced from below with gusseted posts that Nolan had Mace fashion the day prior from plywood scraps and two-by-fours. Before climbing up to walk the top plate, Nolan stops beside a ladder in the master bedroom and takes off his boots and socks. Mace watches him from above, already eager to tackle the dangerous work.

  —I got time for a smoke while you bone the dog?

  Nolan doesn’t respond.

  —No, seriously. What the hell are you doing?

  —Easier to feel the plate this way.

  Mace picks his steps carefully along the top plate over to one of the truss stacks. He sits down and starts pulling off his own boots, one palm cupping the heel, the other wrestling the toe.

  —What the fuck are you two doing? Joe asks when he sees the two of them taking off their shoes.

  —Tricks of the trade, Mace says, letting his cowboy boots drop to the floor below. Jackson here’s part Mohawk.

  —The fuck you know about Mohawks? Joe asks.

  —I know lots you know you don’t know I know.

  —I’m not going to waste time trying to figure out if that even makes sense.

  While Joe and Mason argue, Nolan places his right foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and both hands on either side of it. He draws a deep breath and exhales slowly in an attempt to gather his thoughts and distance himself from distraction, for rolling trusses two stories up is dangerous work that requires great concentration and skill, and if he falls, he’s better off dying, better for him and for his family, who’ve never counted on him, and on whom he doesn’t want to be a burden.

  —Hell, Mason says, his voice cracking, Journeyman here keeps imparting knowledge like this barefoot shit, I’m all you’re going to need around here before long, Joe.

  —As long as I can pay you the same rate.

  —Yeah, I been meaning to talk to you about that.

  Nolan climbs the ladder.

  —Let’s get to work, he says stiffly.

  —Dollar waiting on a dime here.

  They work together, Nolan and Mason, two stories up, carrying one truss at a time out to layout while the peak dangles into the room below, and the inverted rafter tails point over the sides of the farmhouse. They set the truss down on the top plate, and they begin swinging the truss lightly, until, one, they force it away, two, pull it back, and three, with Joe pushing the peak up from below with a length of two-by-four, they roll it into place.

  One by one, they carry each truss out and roll it into place and pull it plumb. After nailing it fast to the top plate with vinyl-dipped sixteens, Nolan holds the truss as steady as he can while Mace shimmies out from the previous one and tacks the one they just rolled down with duplex eights driven into a flimsy length of one-by already marked with layout identical to that of the top plate.

  —Dos cabezas, Mace says, pulling duplex nails from his pouch. I heard a Mexican at the hardware store call them that.

  —Stay focused, Nolan responds.

  —You’re no fun.

  —This isn’t supposed to be fun.

  —You’re boring.

  —Better to be boring than injured or dead.

  After putting each truss in place, they walk the length of the rooms by way of the narrow top plates, carefully making their way back to the depleting stack with their arms raised to stay balanced above a dangerous fall on either side. Mason beats Nolan back to the stack each time.

  —Day’s only so long, old man, he says, spitting over the edge of the building and leaning after the spit, pretending that he is about to fall, but catching himself and watching the amorphous, tobacco-laced globs fall.

  Nolan stops at the middle of the wall, nothing to reach for but a substantial fall in all directions, and he looks Mason in the eye for a few seconds until the kid says:

  —What did I do?

  Nolan looks ahead and lifts his hands and outstretches his arms. Then, he slowly raises his chin and looks up at the sky, vast and empty, the set trusses lined up behind him like exposed ribs of some great leviathan, wind scoured and sun bleached. He stands there for some time, his arms outstretched, his face to the sky, his frame held in perfect balance.

  When he gets back to the stack, Mace says:

  —What was that all about?

  —Try it.

  Mace starts out along the top plate.

  —Try back there first, Nolan says. Someplace where you won’t fall and kill yourself.

  —I’m all right.

  —Mason, Nolan says, the name foreign on his tongue for as familiar it’s become to his mind. Just this once, do as I ask.

  —Whatever.

  Mace returns to the stack. He lifts his hands and stretches out his arms and raises his chin and looks up at the sky and immediately he begins to wobble.

  —Damn, he laughs, catching himself on the stack, that’s hard as fuck.

  Their father rarely spoke about Vietnam and never about combat, never to Nolan, at least. The one or two times Nolan asked his father about the war before he was old enough to realize that his father didn’t want to share or to discuss his experiences, his father simply smiled at Nolan, looked him directly in the eye, tousled his hair, and said:

  —I don’t want to talk about that, bud.

  Nolan was pretty sure Cosmo had gotten the same response, but that didn’t stop his brother from telling a group of friends that their father had crawled through tunnels with a .45 and shot Viet Cong soldiers dead. Chance had gotten this image from a movie he and Nolan snuck into after their mother had dropped them off at the theater to see a movie about a talking duck from outer space. They’d both wanted to see the movie about the war but they knew better than to ask to see it, so, after consulting the newspaper, they made their plan.

  The experience changed Nolan’s conception of his father and Chance’s conception of himself.

  When word got back to their father that Chance was making up stories about his experience in Vietnam and that they had snuck into the R-rated film, their father sat them down on the couch in the living room one night and sat in a chair opposite them. A fire burned in the fireplace behind him. In a calm, patient voice, he said:

  —You want to know what Vietnam was like?

  —No, Chance answered, looking at his hands in his lap.

  —Then why did you sneak into that movie?

  —I don’t know, Chance said.

  —Nolan?

  —I don’t know, Nolan said.

  Their father sighed.

  —Do you want me to tell you what Vietnam was like?

  Chance nodded.

  —Nolan?

  —Yes, he said.

  —Can either of you still see those men and the fire?

  Chance’s lower lip was quivering. Nolan nodded.

  —Yes, he said.

  —It was kind of like that. But a lot of that.

  —Why did you volunteer, then? Chance asked.

  —I thought it was the right thing to do.

  Chance was crying now. He wasn’t sobbing, but his breathing was erratic. Their father placed a hand on the boy’s knee.

  —Do you still think that way? Nolan asked.

  —Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.

  —When do you think yes?

  —When I think of you two.

  —When do you not think it? Chance interjected.

  —When I think of you two.


  Years later, when Nolan was studying the war in the eighth grade, he asked his mother about his father’s experience and she told him that he didn’t want to talk about it with him or his brother because he was a private man, and his privacy was to be respected.

  When Nolan asked her if he’d been drafted, she said:

  —No, he volunteered.

  —Why?

  —Because he was young and idealistic.

  —What does idealistic mean?

  —Really? she asked.

  But seeing she’d made him self-conscious of his early struggles with words, despite her education and Chance’s faculty for the English language, she said:

  —He came from a class of people who think they are above service. He thought they were wrong to think that way, so, to make a point, he volunteered.

  —Did he kill people?

  —You have to ask him to answer that.

  —He doesn’t want to talk about it.

  —Then you have to respect that.

  Nolan was quiet.

  —I still don’t know what idealistic means.

  His mother smiled at him.

  —Go look it up, she said.

  Cosmo and Nolan sit in a booth at the local pizza parlor. Nolan stares at a stainless fork he’s turning on the glossy veneer tabletop while biting at the inside of his cheek. Cosmo sits across from him, leaning back against the wood-paneled booth, his hands behind his head, in his hair. Chili flakes and grated Parmesan have been swept under the napkin dispenser between them. Cosmo adjusts his glasses and begins to gesture as he speaks:

  —The thing about conspiracy theories is that they relieve us of personal accountability. They provide the scapegoat. The theory itself becomes a secular god. We forget our history. We submit to a higher power. They’re convenient.

  Nolan wipes the table, his eyes lingering where the dampness of his hand leaves swipe marks on the surface. He waits for the moment when he can slip a word in edgewise.

  —Stone. Bronze. Iron. Plastic. Silicon. Wireless. But what if that’s it?

  There’s a fervor to Cosmo’s latest rant, a passion that makes Nolan wonder if Cosmo’s been drinking earlier in the day than usual.

  —I unplugged my computer at work one day, and the electricity arced and it was as if I was looking into the eye of a sleeping Cyclops, suddenly awake.